Team NRM deliver photographs of the Weardale Coach

Thanks to Helen Ashby and her team at the National Railway Museum, some very definite progress in memorialising the Weardale Coach Roy Roy can be reported. The story so far is in previous posts. John Askwith from the Weardale Railway came up with the first picture I had seen. Now the NRM have provided four more picture scans of additional images. Two are in the post here. One is of the horn. I quote Helen " we can now confirm that it was part of the Queen Street Collection and was numbered 2323/57Y. It was purple ticked in the ledger which suggests that it was identified for the new National Railway Museum but unfortunately we have been unable to establish what happened to it after the closure of the old York RailwayMuseum".

This means that the likely score is: the actual coach destroyed owing to woodworm c1956. The horn that was also donated and accessioned was in York c1975. It may well be there yet but not quite appreciated for what it is. The photo reproduced is a BTC picture (their name is in it). There was then the matter of the photographs donated to the infant York Museum before the coach arrived. It is my hunch that the three further images York have found could be these. One is reproduced. The other two show an earlier image (by the clothing) and a colour tinted postcard probably from the first two decades of the 20th century. It may be that this imagery can be reproduced in the Weardale Railway's magazine. It is all NRM imagery.

The story ahead? For the Weardale Coach, we may perhaps not unearth much more. Getting to a copy of a Faverdale Exhibition guide could reveal more and will be undertaken when I find myself in the NRM with time on my side. Seeing if a summing up magazine feature could appear makes sense.

For ourselves, we need to focus back on the Forsythe Collection at York. Both Fiona and myself should be there next Tuesday for a photoshoot in connection with a press release about the transfer of the Forsythe Collection.